Fossils at Rockport Quarry with Special Guest Paleo Joe 

Paleo Joe leads tours to this place and others in the area. He does seem to know what he's talking about.

It might look tropical, but it's usually pretty chilly.

@@MichiganRocks Good thing I like chilly. lol Have a great day. I'm getting educated by Joe right now, so much for sleeping.

I am here to serve you, Cactus.

@@MichiganRocks And my learning is to serve you and all your students too, Rob. If you have new questions, just ask, like you already do, in your videos. Two or three heads are better than one, even if we're ALL cabbage!! :)) Thank you for being so open to all our comments and for being so responsive. You are the Michigan treasure! :))

It was fun running into him. It was really nice of him to agree to be in my video. He teaches a lot of people about fossils.

You're welcome, Signe.

That's awesome. I know some of the places that Paleo Joe takes people. He's a great teacher.

Rockport is a lot of fun.

I asked Paleo Joe about those and he said that they were either sponges or stromatolites (he didn't say stromatoporoid). I found a rock a couple yeas ago that someone on a Great Lakes Rocks Facebook group identified as stromatoporoid. I remember looking up the difference at the time. They look pretty similar if I remember correctly. Anyhow, I remember he said stromatolite because we talked about how Kona Dolomite is also a stromatolite.

Kathleen Norton I don’t believe that the creation story in the Bible is meant to be taken literally, but I don’t have a problem with someone taking it literally, because the point of the Bible isn’t to teach us science but to get us to Heaven. The important thing is that we believe that God created the Earth. But the Bible says in Genesis 1:20, “Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures”. The flood doesn’t happen until chapter 7.

I’ll have to get out there one of these nights.

ZeroFox Gibbon There is a new International Dark Sky park at T K Lawless Park near Three Rivers.

He has talked at Jesse Besser museum before. He also does paid guided tours around here several times a summer.

If you like fossils, you'll love Rockport. Have you gone to the sinkholes yet?

Not only was it covered in water, it was south of the equator at that time.

Wow, that's so cool. Going to have to watch some videos on that for the knowledge. Thanks!

I think you might be right. I find sea urchin spines in a ditch in Alpena, where I live. They are shaped a little different though. They're sort of like a chicken drumstick. Pointed on one end and more bulbous on the other end. The thing that you referred to in this video was tapered the same from one end to the other. Maybe it was a different species.

Good to know. I ran into him leading a group in Alpena last week. I was riding my bike by as the group was leaving a park and said hi to him. He's in Alpena fairly often. I heard him speak at the museum once.

Don't you have a whole ocean there? Seems like that's a bigger scale.

The view from the top of the rock pile is great. I really need to get out here with my drone one of these days.

You could spend several days here. There's the quarry, the beach, sinkholes behind, hiking trails. It's a fun place.

I don't remember where that is in the video, but we do find sea urchin spines here.

Good questions. Unfortunately, I don’t know all the answers. I’ve tried searching for info on Rockport, and most of it is just about visiting the park. I have always assumed that the corals and fossils are all mixed up because they fell to the ocean floor and got mixed up there. I never thought of them actually growing together. As for what the limestone was used for, the only thing that I’ve found is that one of the last projects was helping to build the Mackinac Bridge.

@@MichiganRocks Thanks, interesting - I guess they needed a lot of stone/aggregate for the bridge and infrastructure - seems like a large quarry with a lot of debris... Shall have to do some research - certainly loads of fossils.

Visitors to Rockport are allowed to take 25 pounds of rock per year (rocks, fossils, whatever) and you can do with it as you like. Getting some of those larger boulders sliced and polished would be amazing though. There are some huge slabs along the beach there (on the far side of the harbor, past the trees) that have been weathered heavily by the waves and ice that show a lot of detail.

It probably is the best place as long as people don't expect me to identify their fossils. Rockport is a big place. There's lots of parking. How exactly would you suggest I do something like a meet and greet? I would do it on a Saturday so people who are working could come. Weather could be a problem. What happens if I announce it a couple weeks early so people can plan and then it rains? I guess I'd just go anyway and let people decide if they want to join me. What would we do? Would everyone arrive at the same time and we'd all go to the beach or the quarry or the sinkholes together? Would it be better for me to stay in the parking lot all day and say hi to people before they headed off to a place of their choice? These are serious questions. I'd love to hear your ideas.

Yes all sounds great....I suggest meeting in the parking lot in the middle of the afternoon and have a set time where you'll be at the quarry and a time to go on the Beach would be the easiest.... Or maybe reach out to a Rock club and have them organize a rock swap or rock show and have you as a guest!!...... Maybe ask you fans for suggestions and they can come up with something better

@@charlesbordner9240 I'll have to think about it over the winter. I tend to run into people who recognize me there more than any other place. It's fun to actually see some of them people who watch my videos. You guys all know what I look like, but I don't know many of you.

superfluous pastry yes he is!

Thanks Dawn.

I think that was just super glue. It was to keep the fossil from falling apart rather than for color.

@@MichiganRocks Haha ok. It looked like a superglue bottle, but I didn’t think he’d be using that. But makes sense lol. If I go again I’ll be sure to bring a spray bottle.

When* I go again lol.

They're not good for polishing from my experience. When you grind them, the pattern just disappears. They're great as fossil specimens though.

I don’t, but Paleo Joe does once a month in the summer. His info is in the description of this video.

Paleo Joe is great. I had fun hanging out with him that day.

Mimi Shella you can bring a hammer here, but there’s a beach in the area that I have heard you can get a ticket for using a rock hammer. This is an old quarry, so the rock is all broken anyway. I’m not sure about bringing a hammer to the beach at Rockport.

@@MichiganRocks Thanks!

They're not easy to find, I'll tell you that. I don't have a huge interest in fossils, I'm more into lapidary stuff, so I haven't been back to look for any more fish parts. Good luck on your hunt!

@@MichiganRocks In that case, it may take a few trips before I come up lucky! Thanks!!

@@arianasalisbury4368 Nothing bad about a few trips to Rockport.

@@MichiganRocks Amen!

I walked a mile or two to the south this spring (there's a video of it) and I walked about a mile to the north about five years ago. I don't remember the boulders, but I found some really big snail fossils to the north. My wife has one that's about five inches in diameter in her science classroom. It's name is Gary.

@@MichiganRocks o snails fossils oh, how cool! I honestly didn't feel like it was that far to the North but it's been a few years so maybe it was farther than I thought. I just love Rockport! I found so many cool and amazing fossils there! Also if you follow the bike path, near that small park off of State Street, it starts with a b and I'm sorry I can't remember it but I'm sick right now... Anyhow along the shore there there's a bunch of giant slabs that I think were taken out of Rockport... And there was just covered in those little crinoids ..... Many of them which are loose, I got handfuls of perfect specimens from there!

iwantthetruth andnothingbut you’re talking about Bayview Park. I’m not sure, but I thought those rocks would have come from LaFarge since it’s closer.

@@MichiganRocks O possibly, I've never been there ...

There is still a tunnel under the big pile of rocks by the water. It is now barred off to protect the bats that have taken up residence there. I never saw the old buildings, but there are still pieces of cable, a few railroad spikes, and other old pieces of metal lying around.

Everything is white and snow is still falling, so you should probably wait until spring.

Thanks. I just looked those up. I had never heard of them before.

I think so. There aren't any signs saying not to. You might not want to take my word for it and do a little research before doing that though.

I have never gone there to look at the stars. I'm always looking at the ground.

I never heard of that one. I just looked it up and it sure looks similar. Thanks for the ID!

Cool. I guess I can save some gas money traveling to Arizona.

You're welcome. I think Negwegon State Park near Ossineke is also a dark sky location.

I'm not knowledgable enough to debate this one way or the other, but could the destructive process be the mining operation? This whole area has been dug up and these are the scraps left behind.

@Michigan Rocks , I've come to appreciate your presence here, one of RU-vid's 'redeemers', IMHO. In consequence of your substantial investment in your interests, I believe your experience has given you good and sufficient knowledge to ground a review of available, observable evidence. You've done some fair wandering upon that storied stage... First off, you've posed a great, great question: Knowing the overall current general surface condition of the SITE is due to its having been commercially quarried for thirty-five years (mid-'20s to late-'50s), how do we distinguish these LATER industrial effects from the condition of this deposit PRIOR to the quarrying? Is it even possible to locate "undisturbed" evidence original to the rocks themselves? Consider this: The skirt of the once-active Quarry is itself virgin-exposure of the Alpena Limestone Formation; mining revealed this exposure, but it remains raw and "in place" because mining did not proceed in its direction. It, therefore, contains material surficially disturbed only by natural processes; and that coherent, lithic material mass BENEATH the surface we presume to have long lain undisturbed in a fossilized condition. You were even able to find and show us good sized chunks of fossilized rubble laying loose upon the ground--large enough and coherent enough to fairly represent the material we would find still integrated with the formation. Of this material, you passingly noted its "bits and pieces" appearance. With a "due-diligence" attention to discriminating animal types from each other, we see in the material many distinct forms--all the way from single segments of crinoidal stems and their "decapitated", crushed and splayed calyxes, including a variety of blastoids similarly detached; through small fragments of branching corals and shattered bryozoans to roughly roll-worn horn corals, and large but fractured and broken "heads" of hexagonaria; to many pieces of the fabled placoderms (none yet found intact), etc., etc., etc. Nota bene: None of it is articulated or showing an integrity consistent with life; it is a post-mortem dump, all of it encased in a smothering matrix of limey hash, fining down from the recognizable to muddy base-sumps. We everywhere see what can only have been a vast regional biome violently destroyed in some equally vast turbulent event or event-series. Nothing here went "gentle into that good night."

@@thomasdykstra100 Have you been to Rockport, or are you commenting on what you’ve seen in this video? You mentioned crinoids heads and blastoids, but I didn’t find either that I know of. I know what both look like because I’ve found them in other places, not Rockport. I’m not saying they’re not here, but I haven’t found them here. Joe has found a more complete fish here. He has been gathering pieces over the years and is working on putting them back together.

Thanks for reading my "take"... Keep squiring us about Up North! I'm down in a south-westerly direction: Holland, Michigan lakeshore...

I found one of those the other day with really long pointy parts (don't know the proper word for those) that were perfectly preserved on both sides.

I don't think so, I think it's just many years of stuff building up on the sea floor.

I think it just doesn't show up well in the video. That did have a hexagonal pattern (it's hexogonaria after all) and was definitely a Petoskey stone.

Yep, up to 25 lbs. per year.

@@MichiganRocks , which means you'd have to break down some of those larger coral heads, correct?

@@thomasdykstra100 Yes, if you wanted to take them with you. Some of those are way too heavy to carry out even if you wanted to.

Yes. I believe the rule is 25 pounds per year.

Here in Michigan, it's just the opposite. Since the Petoskey stone is our official state stone, pretty much everyone knows what it is. I don't think most people have ever heard of a crinoid.

@@MichiganRocks i was being sarcastic. You mentioned crinoids about a dozen times,but said nothing about them. The whole World knows what petosky stones are. Anyway..thanks for the video

@@tedzilla5826 Oh, sorry, I didn't recognize the sarcasm. It doesn't come through in text very well.

I have been told that those are sea urchin spines and then someone more recently told me it's part of a crinoid. I'm not sure which, if either, is true.

@@MichiganRocks Yes, its difficult to know sometimes from just a picture. If you run into Paleo Joe again, maybe he might know. I do really like your channel a lot. Just very peaceful the way you talk and of course the scenery and the waves are so relaxing. Please keep it going.

@@johngiorgi4000 Wil do!